Daily News - Wednesday 9 October 2013

While investors are chasing returns, no one is putting their money into social housing - the section of the market where we have the greatest deficit of all. The result is thousands of people edging towards homelessness.

The Benevolent Society today released a report to mark its 200th Anniversary that sounds a serious warning about the wellbeing of Australia’s children, and unsustainable future costs to fix social problems which can be prevented by more investment in support for families during children’s early years.

“In dealing with increasing problems such as crime, obesity, anti-social behaviour, child abuse and mental illness, our governments are stuck in a cycle of reacting too late when it’s more costly and less effective,” said The Benevolent Society CEO Anne Hollonds.

Families of people with disabilities should be looking to the community for support as the government prepares to close respite services, advocate Jan Kruger says.

Ms Kruger, whose son Jack has a developmental disability, said the community would become increasingly important for families of people with disabilities as the ACT government prepares to close or offload respite services across Canberra.

Lobby group Carers Australia will today launch four television commercials presenting a day in the life of an unpaid carer -- one as young as nine -- to place pressure on employers to provide flexible hours.

The peak body will be joined by the new Assistant Minister for Social Services, senator Mitch Fifield, to put the issue on the national agenda.

The vast majority of people believe benefits are an important safety net for people in need, a new campaign has revealed today. But one in four people who claim benefits have hidden the fact because they worry what people will think.

The traditional view of health is a biomedical one – stop people from getting ill by preventing infection and treating disease. But a growing body of research showing that health is the result of social conditions has now gathered enough momentum to prompt a rethink about how social policy is made.

Prime Minister John Key has come under heavy fire for his acceptance of Australia's right to discriminate against New Zealanders living in Australia.

Mr Key said after meeting Australian counterpart Tony Abbott in Canberra on Wednesday that he acknowledged a deal between the previous governments of John Howard and Helen Clark that in February 2001 led to the exclusion of expats from most government support and welfare programmes.

The Government has decided the time is right to test social bonds in New Zealand.

Social bonds are an innovative way for governments to contract to achieve specific social sector outcomes. The Ministry of Health (the Ministry) is leading cross-government work to pilot social bonds in New Zealand.

In a contemporary society where the focus lies amid a whirlpool of egocentricity, self-gain and self-improvement, one must question where the true motive for giving service lies, and as a result what defines ethical service giving.

There is no long-term picture of where we want our country to head, no long-term goals, and no one working to try and define, let alone educate us, on how we are going to answer these questions and meet this great Australian challenge.

We go from day to day responding to issues, rather than trying to create an exciting Australia which by 2100 is not only independent, free and democratic but is an outstanding country in which to live.

Surely this is the great Australian challenge, trying to define where we want to get to, and how we are going to do it. And that should be a matter of public conversation and effort.

Pope Francis has called for an extraordinary synod in October 2014 to discuss the subject of the family.

The extraordinary synod will see heads of Eastern churches, presidents of the bishops’ conferences, and heads of Curia offices gather at the Vatican from October 5 – 19 for a meeting entitled “Pastoral Challenges of the Family in Context of Evangelisation”. Only about 150 synod fathers will take part in the session, compared with about 250 bishops who attended the three-week ordinary general assembly on the new evangelisation in October 2012.

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Catholic Social Services Australia represents a national network of 52 Catholic social service organisations that provide direct support to hundreds of thousands of people in need each year on behalf of the Catholic Church. Our agencies provide a diverse range of support from assisting women and children escaping family violence, housing and homelessness support, to mental health and disability services. They also work in partnership with Indigenous people, and offer support and services to people seeking asylum and those who are refugees.